Gardening This Weekend: October 16, 2025
This is where I outline the critical tasks of the weekend, and first and foremost for most of Texas this week will be watering. Follow restrictions that may be in place but do protect your plants. Trees will probably be fine, but small and mid-sized shrubs and groundcovers often take years to replace. Just one deep soaking can make the difference in life and death for them. Be aware, too, of the needs of plants you’ve set out this year. Water by hand to get maximum use out of every drop.
PLANT
• Pansies, violas, snapdragons, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale. These can be colorful now until mid-spring. Planting in containers allows you to move them into protection during extreme cold.
• Finish digging and dividing spring-flowering perennials.
• Daffodils and grape hyacinths can be planted as soon as you buy them. To bloom properly, tulips and Dutch hyacinths will need artificial “chilling” for 45 or more days at 45 degrees in the refrigerator. Plant in mid-December.
• Take cuttings of tropicals and select annual plants you want to keep over the winter.
PRUNE
• Remove dead or damaged branches from trees while you can still distinguish them from healthy limbs.
• Continue mowing lawn at recommended height. Collect and shred fallen tree leaves in the process and put them into compost or use them as mulch.
• Trim shrubs and groundcovers to remove erratic growth but save major reshaping for January.
FERTILIZE
• Ryegrass and fescue with all-nitrogen or high-nitrogen lawn food with 30-40 percent of the N in slow-release form. Both grow during cool weather and will utilize the nutrients efficiently.
• New annual color plants with a high-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food every couple of weeks to get them off to a quick start.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Watch houseplants and patio pots for insects that need to be controlled before you bring the plants indoors for the winter. It’s far easier to treat them outdoors than it will be once they’re inside.
• If you have an area where you will be planting groundcover, vegetables or flowers next spring, and if you want to get rid of the existing grass, spray it now with a glyphosate-only (no other herbicides mixed in) weedkiller. Give it 10 days to kill the tops and roots of the unwanted vegetation and you will be able to start rototilling the soil.
• Brown patch (now called “large patch” by university plant pathologists) is showing up in St. Augustine turf. It will become more prevalent if fall rains come through. It causes very regular round 18- to 24-inch patches of dead leaf blades. The blades will pull loose easily from the runners. Apply labeled turf fungicide to stop further spread. The fungus doesn’t kill the grass, but it weakens it unnecessarily.